As the government's poll lead evaporates like spilt petrol, it must seem
to Tony Blair that his biggest mistake has been, despite all his caution,
to underestimate the power of tabloid sentiment. For months now The Sun
has been agitating for just the motorists' tax-revolt which has culminated
in the greatest crisis to face new Labour since its invention. Blair and
Alastair Campbell, such ardent suitors of that paper's affections, are doubtless
cursing their own weakness in allowing Gordon Brown to pursue even a vaguely
pro-tax, pro-environment, anti-car agenda, the mildest manifestation of
which has been sufficient to see all their work wooing Middle England undone
overnight.

We already know how seriously Blair takes that mythical constituency, and
what he takes to be the unshakeable and unreformable prejudices of its typical
inhabitant, Mondeo Man. As Jonathan Freedland pointed out in an article
in The Guardian, the most disturbing aspect of the summer's leaked
memos from Blair to close colleagues was the irrefutable evidence they provided
of Blair's true view of the country he governs. In the face of a rising
tide of reaction in the press - in particular over the issue of asylum seekers
- and a Tory leadership adopting the kind of bigoted rhetoric which first
brought Thatcher to power, it evidently never crossed Mr Blair's mind that
the answer might be to take on the racists and win the argument.

It is only a short time since the country was united in horror at a series
of nail-bomb attacks aimed at minority communities, reminding
us all of the logical conclusion to which such sentiments lead. The public
does not have such a short memory that the name of Stephen Lawrence has
been forgotten. William Hague is a nasty little man short on telegenic charisma
who resembles physically the skinheads he seems to identify with politically.
Under such circumstances, it could hardly be difficult for the leader who
persuaded the labour party to abandon its life-long commitment to socialism
to come out fighting, take Hague on, and beat the bigots. Blair could easily
have fought back with a line which maintains that the white English - the
British majority - are not, after all, a racist people indifferent to the
suffering of millions and terrified of those different from themselves.
And yet the mere possibility of making such a response was not aired by
any senior Labour figure. Instead, we know from the leaked memos that Blair
saw the only viable response to be one which demonstrated his own personal
commitment to conservatism, authoritarianism and xenophobia. What became
clear here was the fact that whatever Blair's personal views - and one cannot
doubt the authenticity of his private liberal convictions- he sincerely
believes the story about the British - and more specifically the English
- which The Sun and The Daily Mail have always told him and us: that we
are a small-minded, chauvinistic, intolerant and unimaginative people.

This version of Britishness was always central to the success and coherence
of the Thatcher and Major governments. Despite the fact that a majority
of the electorate persisted in voting for parties who had no investment
in it, whose very existence was testament to its falsity, the strategic
ineptitude and fractious sanctimony of those who remained committed to other
visions always prevented them from cohering into a workable alternative.
New Labour came into existence offering one which could succeed not because
it inspired and united all of those who - for largely similar reasons -
hated Tory England , but because it did not frighten the Daily Mail readership
enough for them to be bothered to go out and vote against it. It should
never be forgotten that the 1997 general election was won on the basis of
the lowest turn-out since women got the vote, whilst in 1992 more voters
had turned out to deprive Neil Kinnock of the premiership than had participated
in any previous British election. Coming to power amid the vapid celebration
of (white, heterosexual, male) British youthfulness that was 'Cool Britannia',
the leader of this newly 'young country' has never sought to take on and
refute the true core message of Thatcherism - that the British are a conservative
people - and never sought to flesh out a different picture of what our national
identity might be in the twenty-first century. This is not, apparently,
because he would not like to do so, but because he does not believe it can
be done.

There are several responses to be made to this. Firstly, it is clear that
it can be done. The 1945 Labour government set the terms of political debate
for 3 decades partly by popularising a vision of Britain as a modern, egalitarian,
liberal and tolerant society; this was the explicit aim of the 1951 Festival
of Britain, the success of which the Millennium Experience company has so
conspicuously failed to emulate. It took more than a decade - from the moment
of Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech in 1968 to that of Margaret Thatcher's
election victory in 1979 - to successfully displace this consensual and
democratic view with a different one. That version, propagated by Powell
and Thatcher and the scions of the new right across the globe, and inherited
now by William Hague, is characterised by what commentators such as Stuart
Hall have called 'authoritarian populism': a potent combination of anti-bureaucratic,
individualistic sentiment with nationalism and social conservatism; a politics
which appeals to everything in common popular sentiment which resonates
with an authoritarian political agenda.

The mistake made by so many critics and opponents of authoritarian populism
is to misunderstand what is essential to it and what is not. It is not populism
itself - the simple belief that people can and should govern themselves,
and that popular culture contains positive elements - which is at fault.
Nor is the essential, basic term of authoritarian populism its racism as
such, its social conservatism as such, even its authoritarianism as such;
rather it is its assertion about the relationship of the British people
to those ways of looking at the world. The founding statement of authoritarian
populist discourse as it circulates in the UK is simply that: 'The British
people (meaning, in the main, the English) are by nature incorrigibly conservative,
intolerant, individualistic and ignorant'. It is Blair's complicity with
this statement, rather than any commitment to these values on his own part,
which characterises his government as, in effect, a continuation of the
authoritarian legacy of Thatcher. It is a complicity which seems utterly
futile, however. For even if it were true, even if The Sun and The Mail
did reveal the truth about what the English are really like, there would
be little point in a labour government pandering to them for any length
of time. For who seriously believes that the labour party could ever compete
with the Tories on such terrain? Who could really expect even Tony Blair
to last long in a battle with William Hague to see who was the more violent
in their expressions of anti-democratic, backward-looking bigotry? Take
a policy area like education: who can really believe that even David Blunkett
will ever be crass enough in his reactionary elitism and his contempt for
public-sector professionals to satisfy Chris Woodhead, the ultra-right-wing
inspector of schools who consistently and publicly argues for an educational
agenda quite different from the government's and somewhere to the right
of the conservatives'?

The only hope of survival for the government under such circumstances is
to do what all history-making governments do: re-write the agenda. But so
far they have shown little desire or capacity to think in this way. Instead
their response - from the London Mayoralty debacle to the fuel-pump crisis
- has been to ditch the populism - paying no mind at all to democratic demands
or popular wishes - whilst keeping the control-freak authoritarianism. No-wonder
the poll lead has disappeared.

This is not only a problem for the government, but for all who fear the
consequences of a return to Tory rule. A different notion of Britain, a
different political mood, a different idea of politics cannot be generated
solely or even primarily by government or party. Rather, this vision would
need to be created and celebrated in as many ways and as many places as
that cherished by the right, who routinely succeed by making conservative
Englishness a common cause from the terraces to The Times.

But if unpopular authoritarianism is not the progressive answer to the
problem of authoritarian populism, then what is? The answer is simple enough:
a non-authoritarian populism. A populism which seeks resonances with all
in the lives and ideas of ordinary people which is conducive to the egalitarian,
collectivist, liberal, tolerant, forward-thinking outward-looking spirit
of democracy could be at least as popular and at least as powerful as one
which appeals only to our selfishness and our fears. A politics which does
not patronise the public by assuming it to be incapable of rational thought
or liberal feeling would have the courage to tell us all a different story
about ourselves, and would seek to involve us all in its telling.

The fact is that phenomena like countries, like publics, like the moods
of populations, are not fixed and inert entities which can be simply 'reflected'
by agencies like the press and which politics can only respond to. Public
opinion never simply exists; it is always a battleground, a complex and
contradictory field criss-crossed by frequently-incompatible, always-fluctuating
lines of force. Peoples, like individuals, very rarely have self-images
which are as fixed as they appear on the surface. There are many positive
and progressive sentiments rising in the British breast which run counter
to the assertion that we are an incorrigible nation of Tories. It is this
fundamental assertion which must be challenged at every level if the long-term
hegemony of authoritarian populism is to be displaced, and there are many
democratic elements in contemporary culture which the government, if it
offered leadership, could help to amplify and focus into a force which would
marginalise of the conservative party and the tabloid right for a generation.
The popularity of Ken Livingstone, the rich multiculturalism of contemporary
music culture, the remarkable rise in the self-confidence and academic success
of young women, the continued belief of the public in their own, their childrens
and their parent entitlement to education, health care and a comfortable
retirement, even the spirit which almost saw an out lesbian win Big Brother
(so the lad vote swung it, just: but can anyone believe that 10 years ago
Anna would have even been in the running?) are all elements of a potentially
different image of the British to that of a nation of white van men. Indeed,
even the hostility to the EU, the fuel blockades and the despicable mob
violence which followed the Sarah Payne case bespeak a sense of collective
disempowerment which might not be expressed only in demagoguery and violence
if a genuinely democratic and democratising alternative were available.

To speak of potential moods and alternative visions is easy, but what would
the concrete manifestations of such an agenda be? What I am advocating here
is not so much a specific programme as a type of strategy. A democratic
populism would be a means to a variety of possible ends, although all of
them would be informed by a fundamentally democratic  egalitarian,
collectivist, libertarian  set of principles. It would be a way of
bringing together principles, policies and the means by which to popularise
them. It would be a politics which was democratic in the widest sense: not
merely in favour of a few liberal institutions, but driven by a dynamic
tendency to break down hierarchies and concentrations of power  political,
economic, cultural, social  big or small, wherever they may be found,
in the recognition that this is the only way to guarantee the greatest happiness
for the greatest number. As such, its consequences could never be fully
predicted in advance. Nonetheless, it is worth thinking about what some
possible examples might be.

One of the great obstacles to making any progress with a political agenda
which places our mutual collective responsibilities to each other and our
children above myopic individualism is the prevalence of the car culture.
Of course the fundamental step which must be taken in overcoming it is the
renovation of the national public transport infrastructure. At the same
time, however, attitudes need to change. The reason the fuel blockades turned
into a crisis was that The Sun and the Tory party have been gearing up for
months to consolidate motorists  never previously a recognisable constituency
amongst the UK electorate  into a coherent constituency identified
firmly with anti-tax, anti-public-sector xenophobic individualism. On the
other side of the argument, the typical rhetoric with which agencies 
governmental or otherwise address the public on this issue is one
of vague and hectoring moralism. Unfocussed and intangible pleas to consider
the environment are never likely to challenge the Mondeo mindset. Why not
learn the lesson that the tabloids have always known, that nothing swings
an argument like a threat to the safety of children? Why not hit the public
and the news media hard and repeatedly with the frightening statistics about
the number of children killed, injured, or subjected to illness by the internal
combustion engine? Far tougher legislation against speeding and reckless
driving would be just one consequent element of a long-term campaign to
change public attitudes to motoring in general as they have already been
successfully changed on drunk driving.

Why do agencies ranging from the teaching unions to the government continue
to allow Chris Woodhead to terrorise one of the most dedicated and undervalued
bodies of professionals in the country? This man thinks youre
children arent good enough to go to university  Sack him now!
No campaign could be easier to mobilise. The public would never follow the
anti-liberal, anti-intellectual paranoia which characterises the press
attitude to teachers if it was made clear to them what the elitists who
peddle it think of their children. A genuinely democratic, genuinely populist
approach to education would encourage a real dialogue between teachers 
who would be treated as the dedicated and well-trained public servants that
99% of them are  and parents  few of whom want to see their
children tested rather than taught, driven into competitive hysteria in
under-resourced classrooms rather than allowed to develop as human beings-
and would not subject both to the diktats of a class of managerial technocrats.

The very possibility of a popular pro-Europeanism seems off the agenda
in Britain, yet Blairs commitment to the Euro is well-known. It is
obviously unthinkable that the tabloids and the Tories will abandon their
campaign against the Euro or that the British public will simply decide
to ignore them without a positive case being put. A democratic populist
approach to the issue would present just such a case, but in the context
of a programme for democratisation of the EU, challenging both the spurious
myth of national sovereignty in a global economy and the technocratic centralism
of the current EU agenda. The wholly justifiable fear that some measure
of politico-economic autonomy will be lost with the pound, the wholly accurate
assessment that trans-national institutions undermine the authority of national
polities, should not be patronised with assurances as to the beneficence
of unaccountable bodies. The demand for a peoples Europe is one which
shouldnt be confined to the far left, and it is one which has yet
to be articulated with any force in the context of British public debate.

The position being taken here is far from new. It is the same one articulated
by Antonio Gramsci in the 1930s as the basis for radical politics in a mass
democracy and recommended by Raymond Williams in the earliest days of cultural
studies. It is the position advocated by Stuart Hall throughout his career.
It was the politics of the GLC at its best. It is a position which simply
refuses to equate the popular with the conservative and seeks to make positive
social change something which large numbers of people feel themselves to
have a stake in.

Of course, it is not only the government which is unwilling or unable to
articulate such a position. The self-styled defenders of radical politics
in the UK today either lack any conception at all of what it might mean
to be popular or actively refuse such an aspiration. When, in the mid 1990s,
Reclaim the Streets appeared to be on the verge of popularity, at the height
of the convergence between the anti-roads movement and public concern about
transport policy, their instinctive response was to reinvent themselves
as anti-capitalist purists in the best anarchist tradition,
smugly satisfied at their success in alienating any member of the public
who was not already a member of the same ultraleft subculture which organised
the Stop the City actions and the anti poll-tax protests in the 1980s. The
shrilly self-righteous rhetoric typical of publications like Schnews and
Squall bespeaks a world-view which is far happier to stay safe in its cultural
ghetto than to risk the responsibility of actual historical relevance. If
the self-appointed saints of the direct action movement allowed themselves
to think in such terms for even a moment then they would be forced to confront
their utter failure to sustain a single political victory or even to maintain
a minimum of public support. As for the remnants of the revolutionary left,
their decades-long record of failure to inspire a popular following speaks
for itself.

Not that there is cause for complacency in any quarter. The Williams-Hall
tradition of the New Left and Marxism Today has been saying much of this
in different ways since the 1950s: who has listened? The tradition which
I am writing in right now is probably at least as guilty of self-satisfied
sectarianism as any other on the left, and if that is so then it is a habit
which we can ill-afford to persist in this new century. The question which
this tradition has often been unable to answer is the same one which my
analysis here still begs: who are to be the agents of this new politics?
What are to be the sites at which it is practiced? There are no simple answers
to these questions but there are a number of possible ones. Probably the
institutions with the most power to take it up would be still, despite the
waning of the class struggle, the trade unions. Indeed, if the long-rumoured
divorce between the trade unions and the Labour Party were ever to come
about (unlikely unless the British public could be persuaded the support
the state funding of political parties) then the union political funds would
become the greatest potential resource for progressive campaigning that
there has ever been in this country. Rather than bankrolling new labour,
the unions could sponsor a range of campaigns aimed at popularising a truly
democratic politics, much as the TUC has already done invaluable work in
organising campaigns against racism. A range of other bodies with investments
in such a politics could also play a part, from the liberal democrats to
the non-Tory press, from the revolutionary left to Friends of the Earth
and even (who know?) Reclaim the Streets. It is not as if this campaign
would require a co-ordinating committee, a common manifesto, or a paid-up
membership. All that would be required would be a common insistence 
by whatever means necessary  that The Daily Mails version of
Middle England is not representative even of the English (never mind the
rest of Britain). This sounds simple enough, but it is not. Those with a
psychic investment in the idea of themselves as rebels and outlaws would
have to divest themselves of it, learning a language which did not automatically
alienate the majority, understanding that there is no a action as effective
as persuasion. Those who have trained themselves never to breathe a word
that might alienate Middle England would have to learn the courage to tell
Middle England to its face that it might not, after all, always have to
be Middle England.

Above all, it would require all of those who dream of a green and pleasant
land not entirely overrun with white vans and Mondeos never to forget who
the true enemy is: not those who drive them, but those who tell them that
they can never do anything else; not those who seek a different degree of
social transformation, but those who oppose it all together; not those whose
methods and tactics are different, but those whose fundamental message is
that the British should never be anything but jingoistic denizens of a post-Imperial
backwater. It is the pernicious message of the Tories and their allies in
the press which must be resisted with an alternative set of values, democratic
values to which everyone from Charles Kennedy to the anarchist anti-capitalists
already subscribe. Whatever the very real differences between us 
cultural, political and ideological  they are as nothing compared
to the gulf, the moral void, which separates us from Portillo and Hague.
If we could remember that then all our energies might still not go to waste,
and real democratic progress might be possible. It could be done. It has
happened before, with the election of the Atlee government in the 1940s,
with the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The failure to keep
that revolution popular was what opened the door for the rise of the new
right: only its reconnection with the people will consign Thatcher and Powell
to history